Harbor Country Living

As the chairman of Radio Harbor Country's Programming Committee, Linas Johansonas has played an important role in the development and launch of the low-power community radio station. - photo by Ray Gudas

‘Johan' returns to the airwaves

By Ray Gudas, News associate editor

UNION PIER - Ask Linas Johansonas about a subject that is dear to him - Lithuania, for instance (he's the son of Lithuanian immigrants), or Milda's Deli (he's Milda's husband, which makes him second in command and chief bottle washer at the store), or Ibrahim Parlak (he and his wife were early supporters of the Harbert restaurateur) - and he can talk until one of you passes out.

Probably you.
But you can't really blame Johansonas for liking the sound of his own voice. You see, he used to be in radio. Big Time. In Cleveland. Back in the 1980s and early '90s. He was a lot younger then, of course, not to mention thinner and hairier, but then, weren't we all.

In those days, he schmoozed and rubbed elbows with the movers and shaker of Cleveland's rock 'n' roll scene, eventually becoming one of its contributing players himself.

Believe it or not, the guy who made your gyros sandwich last week came in second to Howard Stern - yes, THAT Howard Stern - in a 1996 popularity poll of radio listeners conducted by the Cleveland Free Times.

Known to Cleveland audiences simply as Johan (pronounced YO-hahn), Johansonas got his first job in radio in 1977, when, after repeated on-air telephone conversations with a popular morning deejay at one of the city's top rock stations, he was invited to become a regular character on his show.

“He thought I was funny,” Johansonas recalls.

But Johansonas didn't just phone it in, he started hanging around the station, learning everything he could about what went on there and how it all got done. Eventually, he got an offer to become a morning-show producer, and he jumped at it.

The job didn't last very long, but by then Johansonas was hooked on the radio business. In 1979, he enrolled in Cleveland State University to study mass media communications, and he took a part-time job at a college radio station.

As fate would have it, the radio job eventually led to an internship at the legendary Cleveland Agora Theater, which during its heyday was unrivaled as the city's premier rock 'n' roll nightclub.

During the mid-1980s, after exploring the music scene in Los Angeles for a couple of years, that connection was instrumental in getting him hired as the Agora's public relations and promotional director, a job he held for more than a decade.

And it was that job, in turn, that led to his return to Cleveland radio in 1993, as host of a very popular two-hour Sunday night show called “Inner Sanctum,” which featured the best of local bands. The show was broadcast on WENZ, one of the city's leading rock stations at the time.

Both opportunities, like youth itself, ran their course, eventually, and though other radio ventures came and went, Johansonas's relocation to southwestern Michigan in 2003, his marriage to Milda and other practicalities made it seem unlikely that he would pursue that passion ever again.

Not surprisingly, when he first heard about the effort by local volunteers to launch a non-profit community radio station in Three Oaks earlier this year - what we now know as WRHC, or Radio Harbor Country - Johansonas was all ears.

Initially, the Union Pier resident saw it as a possible opportunity to revive his radio muscles, perhaps to host a show aimed at this area's Lithuanian community, of which he and his wife are active members.

Unable to restrain his growing enthusiasm for the fledgling radio station, however, he went a little overboard and ended up volunteering to host three weekly programs.

The list includes the above-referenced “Lithuanian Free Zone,” a mixture of talk, music and news aimed at listeners of Lithuanian heritage; “Happy Hour,” featuring what Johansonas described as “polka music that rocks” (ever hear “Purple Haze” done on an electric accordion?); and, on a more serious note, “Meet the Host,” a half-hour program featuring interviews with various WRHC show hosts.

As if that weren't enough to take on for no pay, he also got himself elected to the radio station's Board of Directors, and he was chosen to head the station's Programming Committee, which is responsible for developing the station's content.

That means finding show hosts, helping them develop their program ideas, if necessary, and then training them to produce their shows, be they pre-recorded or broadcast live.

“For me,” Johansonas said, “the appeal is that you get to be creative. You don't have some corporate jerk to answer to.”

Johansonas may indeed feel lucky to have a chance to jump into radio again, but there's no doubt that Radio Harbor Country is equally lucky to have him.

Just be glad that he isn't interested in YOUR job.

December 15, 2005 -Ray Gudas, News associate editor
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